Anna’s Archive has published a claim that it scraped 256 million rows of track metadata from Spotify along with references to 86 million audio files. The group says the audio portion will be distributed via torrents in the near future. Spotify confirmed the breach to multiple outlets, stating that investigators determined a third party first scraped publicly accessible metadata, then applied techniques to circumvent DRM and extract a subset of audio files. The company has disabled the associated accounts, deployed new technical blocks against similar scraping and circumvention, and is continuing to monitor. Spotify emphasized that the extracted files do not represent its full catalog, which exceeds 100 million tracks. It does not believe the audio has been publicly released as of the latest statements. Anna’s Archive, primarily known for hosting shadow copies of books and academic papers, described the project as the creation of a “preservation archive” for music. The group asserted that the 86 million files account for 99.6% of all streams on Spotify and called the platform’s catalog “a great start” toward preserving recorded music, given that no single service holds every recording. They framed the effort as protection of “humanity’s musical heritage” against risks including natural disasters, conflict, funding cuts, and other forms of loss.86 Million Spotify Tracks Scraped in Data Leak
